‘Sholl ter?’ she echoed, teasing.

He smiled. ‘Ay, sholl ter?’ he repeated.

‘Ay!’ she said, imitating the dialect sound.

‘Yi!’ he said.

‘Yi!’ she repeated.

‘An’ slaip wi’ me,’ he said. ‘It needs that. When sholt come?’

‘When sholl I?’ she said.

‘Nay,’ he said, ‘tha canna do’t. When sholt come then?’

‘‘Appen Sunday,’ she said.

‘‘Appen a’ Sunday! Ay!’

He laughed at her quickly.

‘Nay, tha canna,’ he protested.

‘Why canna I?’ she said.

On Sunday Clifford wanted to go into the wood. It was a lovely morning, the pear–blossom and plum had suddenly appeared in the world in a wonder of white here and there.

It was cruel for Clifford, while the world bloomed, to have to be helped from chair to bath–chair. But he had forgotten, and even seemed to have a certain conceit of himself in his lameness. Connie still suffered, having to lift his inert legs into place. Mrs Bolton did it now, or Field.

She waited for him at the top of the drive, at the edge of the screen of beeches. His chair came puffing along with a sort of valetudinarian slow importance. As he joined his wife he said:

‘Sir Clifford on his roaming steed!’

‘Snorting, at least!’ she laughed.

He stopped and looked round at the facade of the long, low old brown house.

‘Wragby doesn’t wink an eyelid!’ he said. ‘But then why should it! I I ride upon the achievements of the mind of man, and that beats a horse.’

‘I suppose it does. And the souls in Plato riding up to heaven in a two–horse chariot would go in a Ford car now,’ she said.

‘Or a Rolls–Royce: Plato was an aristocrat!’

‘Quite! No more black horse to thrash and maltreat. Plato never thought we’d go one better than his black steed and his white steed, and have no steeds at all, only an engine!’

‘Only an engine and gas!’ said Clifford.

‘I hope I can have some repairs done to the old place next year. I think I shall have about a thousand to spare for that: but work costs so much!’ he added.

‘Oh, good!’ said Connie. ‘If only there aren’t more strikes!’

‘What would be the use of their striking again! Merely ruin the industry, what’s left of it: and surely the owls are beginning to see it!’

‘Perhaps they don’t mind ruining the industry,’ said Connie.

‘Ah, don’t talk like a woman! The industry fills their bellies, even if it can’t keep their pockets quite so flush,’ he said, using turns of speech that oddly had a twang of Mrs Bolton.

‘But didn’t you say the other day that you were a conservative–anarchist,’ she asked innocently.

‘And did you understand what I meant?’ he retorted. ‘All I meant is, people can be what they like and feel what they like and do what they like, strictly privately, so long as they keep the FORM of life intact, and the apparatus.’

Well, from that time Sarah hated me with her whole heart and soul, and she is a woman who can hate, too. I was a fool to let her go on biding with us — a besotted fool — but I never said a word to Mary, for I knew it would grieve her. Things went on much as before, but after a time I began to find that there was a bit of a change in Mary herself. She had always been so trusting and so innocent, but now she became queer and suspicious, wanting to know where I had been and what I had been doing, and whom my letters were from, and what I had in my pockets, and a thousand such follies. Day by day she grew queerer and more irritable, and we had ceaseless rows about nothing. I was fairly puzzled by it all. Sarah avoided me now, but she and Mary were just inseparable. I can see now how she was plotting and scheming and poisoning my wife’s mind against me, but I was such a blind beetle that I could not understand it at the time. Then I broke my blue ribbon and began to drink again, but I think I should not have done it if Mary had been the same as ever. She had some reason to be disgusted with me now, and the gap between us began to be wider and wider. And then this Alec Fairbairn chipped in, and things became a thousand times blacker.

It was to see Sarah that he came to my house first, but soon it was to see us, for he was a man with winning ways, and he made friends wherever he went. He was a dashing, swaggering chap, smart and curled, who had seen half the world and could talk of what he had seen. He was good company, I won’t deny it, and he had wonderful polite ways with him for a sailor man, so that I think there must have been a time when he knew more of the poop than the forecastle. For a month he was in and out of my house, and never once did it cross my mind that harm might come of his soft, tricky ways. And then at last something made me suspect, and from that day my peace was gone forever.

It was only a little thing, too. I had come into the parlour unexpected, and as I walked in at the door I saw a light of welcome on my wife’s face. But as she saw who it was it faded again, and she turned away with a look of disappointment. That was enough for me. There was no one but Alec Fairbairn whose step she could have mistaken for mine. If I could have seen him then I should have killed him, for I have always been like a madman when my temper gets loose. Mary saw the devil’s light in my eyes, and she ran forward with her hands on my sleeve. “Don’t, Jim, don’t!” says she. “Where’s Sarah?” I asked. “In the kitchen,” says she. “Sarah,” says I as I went in, “this man Fairbairn is never to darken my door again.” “Why not?” says she. “Because I order it.” “Oh!” says she, “if my friends are not good enough for this house, then I am not good enough for it either.” “You can do what you like,” says I, “but if Fairbairn shows his face here again I’ll send you one of his ears for a keepsake.” She was frightened by my face, I think, for she never answered a word, and the same evening she left my house.